Which pope started celibacy

Protestants early on took exception to celibacy, arguing that it promoted masturbation, homosexuality and illicit fornication. Martin Luther singled out masturbation as one of the gravest offenses likely to be committed by those who were celibate. To say it crudely but honestly, if it doesn't go into a woman, it goes into your shirt. Celibacy is considered an important part of the priesthood, a sign of a priest's commitment to God and service.

Today, though, there are some exceptions to the rule of unmarried clergy. Anglican ministers who were already married when they joined the Catholic Church are allowed to remain married if they choose to join the priesthood. The Catholic Church distinguishes between dogma and regulations. The male-only priesthood is Catholic dogma, irreversible by papal decree.

The ban on marriage is considered a regulation. As Knight-Ridder put it,"That means the pope could change it overnight if he wished. The first modern scholar to make a comprehensive study of church celibacy was Henry Charles Lea over a century ago.

Lea, a Protestant critical of the Catholic Church, closed his long book with the following statement:. The traditions of the past must first be forgotten; the hopes of the future must first be abandoned. The Latin church is the most wonderful structure in history, and ere its leaders can consent to such a reform they must confess that its career, so full of proud recollections, has been an error. To access an online edition of the book, published by MOA Making of America click here allow several minutes to download the text.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Vatican wistleblower Richard Sipe??? Thanks in advance for any assistance in this regard--Js.

I think this "man-made" rule is nuts. How can you say to a non-catholic married minister of another church, "If you join us and wish to become a priest , it's okay to keep your wife. The church punishes it's own for being catholic. How stupid. I am a catholic and I truly belive that one day common sense will prevail and a progresive Pope will bring the church to it's senses.

Found it necessary to clarify a matter or two. My two questions posed regarding post-Resurrection and Mary Magdalene likely marriage, thus sexual intercourse non-platonic relationship with Jesus, really I must say derives not only from treatment by Phipps, but also, let it be said, interpolations and thinking on my own.

At this point, based upon a passage from Was Jesus Married? That is, as Phipps gives it, people I have the utterly mistaken notion of Jesus as a "kill-joy. That is why Phipps could very rightly head chapter 3 of The Sexuality of Jesus with this "Jesus the Philogynist" by the way see p.

To conclude then regarding the "kill-joy" theme and the very positive attitudes of Jesus on married life and I would think would prove he would never have rejected such for himself the whole of that being antithetical to celibacy as some kind of purer condition for believers, in particular leaders of the Church. Why after now two thousand years can we NOT manage with Jesus as shining example of invariably caring and more--loving--of women, and very probable marriage with Mary Magdalene, with all that would entail in and out of bed to abandon the pernicious notions that sex between a man and woman when in love and respecting each other in mind and body and especially in marriage is less worthy to God than a celibate life?

One further point, which I offer as my "clincher" on this whole matter of Jesus, his probable marriage, and his remarkably open-to-living ethical though certainly but in joy and fullness at same time, to wit--the first miracle performed by Jesus was at a wedding feast at Cana; and as the Gospel account gives it, the guests remarked, that wine, which Jesus transformed from water, was the best--normally opened first on such an occasion.

Hormidas 1 son St. History sources: Oxford Dictionary of Popes; H. Foy Ed. Jewtt The Ordination of Women ; A. DeRosa Vicars of Christ Myth: All priests take a vow of celibacy. Fact: Most priests do not take a vow.

It is a promise made before the bishop. Myth: Celibacy is not the reason for the vocation shortage. Fact: A survey of Protestant churches shows a surplus of clergy; the Catholic church alone has a shortage. Myth: Clerical celibacy has been the norm since the Second Lateran Council in Fact: Priests and even popes still continued to marry and have children for several hundred years after that date.

In fact, the Eastern Catholic Church still has married priests. Myth: The vocation shortage is due to materialism and lack of faith. Fact: Research Lilly endowment : there is no evidence to support loss of faith for less vocations We believe that priests should be allowed to marry and that women have an equal right to have their call to ordination tested along with male candidates. We believe celibacy is a gift of the Spirit, as is the call to marriage and the single life.

Gifts cannot be mandated, so it is from a deep respect for the gift of celibacy that we request that it be made optional and not forced upon those who do not feel called in this way. The Emperor also went further than the ecclesiastical canons in requiring bishops to be without progeny, for fear of alienation of Church property.

It followed Justinian in requiring bishops to be separated from their wives c. This was to be done by common agreement before their consecration, and the wives would enter a monastery where they could become deaconesses c. The requirement of childlessness was ignored this was abrogated by Emperor Leo VI two centuries later. Widespread ignorance among clergy of the laws governing marriage is acknowledged and traditional discipline re-asserted c.

But married priests, deacons and subdeacons are authorized to have marital relations, except during the periods when they serve at the altar c. With regard to c. The Codex, however, is clearly misinterpreted. The canon from the Synod of Carthage which is quoted had declared perpetual continence The Trullan Synod is regarded in the East as part of the Sixth Ecumenical Council , thus having supreme legislative authority.

It has since remained the definitive statement on clerical marriage. Rome, on the other hand, immediately objected to the canons which were against Western discipline and to this day has not accepted them as belonging to the ecumenical heritage. The Trullan Synod highlights service at the altar as the dominant motive for clerical continence, even if only practised on a temporary basis.

Indeed, the patristic theology of the priesthood, stressing its intercessorial and mediatorial function favoured, on scriptural grounds, a connection between dedicated continence and priestly prayer. This also figured prominently in the history of married lay spirituality.

These justified their behaviour by calling upon the example of the Levites of the Old Testament. The swift response was that the Christian priesthood was more than a continuation of the Levitical priesthood — it was its perfection, being spiritual and non-hereditary.

Hence the a fortiori case: if the Levites practised temporary continence when in the sanctuary, so much more should Christian priests, always ready to serve, practise continence.

One scriptural quotation notable for its absence in the early texts is the Matthean logion: «eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom» Mt , which is never directly applied to priests. This omission suggests an attitude that priestly continence was not to be considered a voluntary perfection of the priestly state, but rather to be an intrinsic characteristic.

It is true that, in the patristic age, the marked sense of the transcendence of God led to an anthropology that relativized many of the values of marriage to the things of this world. Relative to the things of God, sexual activity could be described in terms that draw on the vocabulary of Levitical ritualism but which offend the linguistic sensibilities of our own time.

Non-monastic priests were expected to be married. From the eleventh century norms appear which prohibit the ordination to the parochial ministry of an unmarried man. Those celibates who worked closely with the bishop would be unmarried priests who had taken the monastic profession. Those married clergy who became widowers were compelled to leave their ministry and enter a monastery. The Synod of Moscow abrogated this requirement, at the same time authorizing remarriage with reduction to the state of a minor cleric.

Bishops, in keeping with the spirit, if not the letter, of Trullan legislation, were chosen from amongst monastic candidates, although, exceptionally, a celibate layman would be ordained after making monastic profession. More research is needed to understand properly the developments in the non-Chalcedonian Churches under Islamic rule. It is reasonable to assume, however, that whilst under Byzantine rule imperial legislation was required to be observed.

By the High Middle Ages a tradition had developed in the Coptic Church of ordaining children to the diaconate. They were permitted to marry after reaching puberty. The Nestorians, who were outside the Empire, continued from the fifth century to have a married clergy not bound to strict continence. All Orthodox Churches today have a married clergy.

The Eastern Churches in union with Rome followed the norms of temporary continence appropriate to each respective tradition. The ordination of unmarried men was encouraged by the Eastern hierarchies, bishops also being selected from non-monastic candidates.

The discipline of temporary continence has been largely ignored in the twentieth century, presumably because of the assimilation to contemporary Roman Catholic practice of daily Eucharist. Special decrees have been issued by the Holy See in respect to married clergy outside the territory of origin of their Church, and the present law is found in the Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium. From the seventh century to the time of the Gregorian Reform and the legislation of the Lateran Councils, Church authorities made constant efforts to reform clerical mores.

The whole fabric of clerical life, not just the life of continence, was deeply affected by the new social structures and changed conditions that followed the disintegration of imperial organization.

The tone of the disciplinary measures taken by the hierarchy was that of conservation and reformation, not innovation. Canonical collections, such as the Dionysiana, were circulated widely, reminding bishops of the discipline of earlier centuries. Some over-zealous reformers skilfully fabricated a number of texts, claiming they had been lost, to add even greater weight to the existing sources.

These formed part of the Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries ca. They were accepted because of the widely-held conviction that they corresponded to the spirit of traditional legislation. Penitential books and the Capitularies of the Frankish bishops also expressed the need to conserve established discipline, as did the rulings of many regional councils and diocesan synods as well as the interventions of the popes.

The Gregorian Reform, enthusiastically encouraged by the monasteries, was a systematic effort to strike at the roots of abuses in the Church. The success of the Reform was largely due to the uninhibited exercise of papal authority, by Gregory VII and his successors, over the bishops who had allowed traditional discipline to be ignored or forgotten.

This period is also characterized by the appearance of theoretical attacks on priestly celibacy, with corresponding counter-arguments: the libelli de lite. One argument used by the opponents to the reform was the story of Paphnutius at the Council of Nicaea. Of the numerous synods convoked throughout Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries to enforce with rigour the neglected law, the most notable are the First Lateran Council and the Second Lateran Council , considered as ecumenical in Roman tradition.

Lateran I made into general law the prohibition of cohabiting with wives c. Lateran II, c. At times, this Council is wrongly interpreted as having introduced for the first time the general law of celibacy, with only unmarried men being admitted to the priesthood. Yet what the Council was doing, in a more pointed way, was re-emphasizing the law of continence These decretals form part of the Corpus Iuris Canonici, a work completed in the fourteenth century and which influenced law-making until the appearance of the Code of Canon Law.

From these sources, we learn that from the time of Alexander III married men were not, as a rule, allowed to have ecclesiastical benefices; a lower cleric who married would have his benefice withdrawn, but not his right to subdiaconate ordination on the condition that he discontinues his marital life.

Young wives and the wives of bishops were to agree at the time of ordination to enter a convent. In Pope John XXII insisted that no one bound in marriage — even if unconsummated — could be ordained unless there was full knowledge of the requirements of Church law. If the free consent of the wife had not been obtained, the husband, even if already ordained, was to be reunited with his wife, exercise of his ministry being barred.

Hence the irregularitas ex defectu libertatis of a married man, which became a formal impediment impedimentum simplex only in the twentieth century with the promulgation of the Codex Iuris Canonici , was not due to the marriage bond per se.

It was due to this assumption of unwillingness and inability to separate. From , all cases of dispensation from the impediment were reserved to the Holy See. But those receiving dispensation were not authorized by that fact to continue with marital relations. The decretals and other parts of the Corpus Iuris Canonici provided the guidelines for synodal activity, concubinage being a persistent problem for the authorities.

Opposition to the law of the Church was not lacking and occasionally well-respected figures argued for a mitigation of the law to help solve the problems of clerical indiscipline Panormitanus, at the time of the Council of Basle [], for example.

The example of the practice of the East was given as a precedent, although it is unlikely that there was a proper understanding of this discipline. The crisis precipitated by the Reformers was doctrinal as well as disciplinary. Zwingli and Martin Luther made the abolition of clerical celibacy a key element to their reform, but this was also related to the dismantling of the traditional theology of the sacramental priesthood. In the third and final period of the Council of Trent , and despite considerable pressures, all suggestions that the Catholic Church should modify and mitigate its rules of celibacy were rejected.

The discipline of continence by this time had meant in practice that only an unmarried man would be ordained. This is also shown in the discussions of the Council, for example when one theologian, Desiderius de S. Martino, concerned by the shortage of priests, suggested the possibility of ordaining married men provided the wives gave consent and that they and their husbands lived in continence.

But the measure was not deemed expedient. The decrees of the Council were not immediately accepted in all nations but with time they did bring about a general observance of the law of celibacy, thanks in no small measure to their provisions for the better training of the clergy. The Enlightenment brought fresh assaults against clerical celibacy and after the First Vatican Council, the Old Catholics, separating themselves from Rome, abolished the rule.

Despite the pressures on the Catholic Church to relax the law of celibacy, it has always resisted. Pope Benedict XV declared, in his Consistorial Allocution of 16 December , that the Church considered celibacy to be of such importance that it could never abolish it.

For example Pope Hormisdas 5 , father to Pope Silverius, his successor. Canons of Gregory the Illuminator, c.